1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a work handling apparatus for holding, transferring and positioning works when performing various operations including processing such as coating, heat processing, chemical processing and cleaning, inspection, measurement, machining and assembly for the works including electronic parts such as a semiconductor chip or substrate, or machine parts.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a known handling apparatus in the related art for loading and unloading works such as semiconductor chips with respect to an inspection area, for example, there is an apparatus including two transfer channels for transferring a work, two transfer hands being capable of adsorbing the work and reciprocating in a lateral horizontal direction (right-and-left direction) orthogonal to a transfer direction of the two transfer channels and the vertical direction, and inspection sockets arranged at midsections of the two transfer channels, in which the two transfer hands move in the right-and-left direction simultaneously for replacing the works with respect to the inspection sockets (for example, Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication JP2002-148307).
However, the transfer hands in this apparatus transfer the works two-dimensionally within a vertical plane and do not transfer the works two-dimensionally within a horizontal plane.
On the other hand, as a handling apparatus for transferring works two-dimensionally in the horizontal plane, there is a known apparatus including two traveling channels formed respectively on the left and right sides so as to be extended in a front-and-rear direction, a work (IC chip) storage unit arranged in the front of the apparatus, a test unit arranged at the rear of the apparatus for conducting a test for works (IC chips), a loading mechanism reciprocating in the front-and-rear direction while being guided by the left traveling channel for loading the works (IC chips), an unloading mechanism reciprocating in the fore-and-aft direction while being guided by the right traveling channel for unloading the works (IC chips), in which the loading mechanism loads uninspected works from the work storage unit to the test unit and the unloading mechanism unloads inspected works from the test unit to the work storage unit (for example, Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication JP2002-174658).
However, in this apparatus, the loading mechanism travels only within a left side area for transferring the works and the unloading mechanism travels only within a right side area for transferring the works. That is, since the loading mechanism and the unloading mechanism are formed so as to travel their own areas (the left side area and the right side area) arranged at a distance to a certain degree in the direction of the horizontal plane in order to avoid mutual interference, it is difficult to arrange the loading mechanism and the unloading mechanism intensively near the center, and hence a relatively large space is necessary for installing this apparatus in a semiconductor manufacturing line or the like. Because of inevitable upsizing, the traveling distance for transferring the work is elongated as well, whereby the time period required for conducting a predetermined inspection after the work is loaded in the inspection area and unloading the works having completed the inspection to the predetermined area again is elongated, so that improvement of the productivity is difficult.